Getting Your Microsoft Teams Classrooom Organized: Understanding Your Team, Channels and Tabs
Your Microsoft Teams Classroom:
Post Co-written by Infused Classroom and Ditch That Textbook
Think of Microsoft Teams for your Classroom as your learning hub for each class you teach or even an after-school activity. It’s your command central for each class. If you teach several classes during the day – you would have several different teams. And they are organized – once you select Teams in the left sidebar – into fun tiles that you can customize, It is in this view that you will see all of the teams you both own and are part of.
Naming your teams is important.
You want to make sure you are using identifiers so that there are not seven ‘Humanities’ classes on the backend if there is ever a problem. Make sure it has unique qualities that will make it easier to find for the backend IT -and so that class names are not repetitive and confusing for students.
The General Channel in Teams:
Each Team has a General Channel that is like the cockpit of your Team.
There are two important things to remember about this your Teams channel:
- You can only have non – editable files here under the class folder (unless you go in through share point and change permissions)
- You ONLY have access to Assignments and Grades from this area.
You can invite team members to a Video Meeting from this General area – but you can also invite from within a Channel.
Keeping Track of Important Information within Microsoft Teams
Teachers can save important conversations and content by bookmarking it directly from the Post.
- Hover over the post
- Select the three dots
- Select SAVE this information
- To find the saved information later – head to your profile icon and choose ‘Saved’ to see a list of all your saved information. This is unique for each user and will populate in the left side area where you normally see channels.
Learn more in this short video –
Tips for Understanding Microsoft Teams Channels
Channels are one of the best features of Teams and can be used so many different ways..
- Channels are meant to be a collaborative area where members can have conversations and work on classwork and/or projects together.
- This area helps keep your General team less crowded.
- Create a unique Channel for ‘Meetings’ so that they are easier to find – especially for The Littles
Microsoft Teams Channel Permissions:
You can also change the permissions on the channel to allow only some students in – or to allow students to help you moderate and add content.
You can also use SharePoint to create View Only Folders. This is important as the default in channels is that all folders remain collaborative.
Ways Teachers Can Use Channels in Teams – As An Asset For A Larger Class
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- Small-Group Work – through private small group channels
- Break Channels into Units or Topics
- Make Project or Inquiry Areas for Q and A and Resources
- Collaborative Study Space for Students with A Stream of Tutorials
- Break Down a Unit By Idea Channels – This will get crowded so consider hiding or deleting them as soon as they are not needed.
- Differentiated Content – give out different content to different groups by creating unique channels for groups.
- Resource Area
Don’t Forget:
- You can hide the channel when you have moved onto new content or idea.
- Change the channel notifications to your preference or level of alerts.
Learn more in this quick video
In each channel, you can add additional Tabs that allow you to bring interactivity and reach the full potential of Teams by adding Apps to the tabs.
This feature allows the teacher to embedded resources to your Team or Channel. This is a very cool feature and can add great productivity and creativity to the student experience.
- The tabs stack one on top of the other but can not be moved around once chosen.
🙌For more on Microsoft Team Classroom Tabs – Check out this post
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Special thanks to @jmattmiller for the graphic.